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Assemblage and Mixed Media Art Exhibit Dates: July 4th - August 5th, 2007, |
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 ©Marianne Lettieri (click on image for details) |
 ©Ginger Slonaker (click on image for details) |
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Few things are more important than home. We have one, we want one, and we all have an opinion of what a home should be. Beliefs of house and home are so deep they motivate and influence every day of our lives. Artists Marianne Lettieri and Ginger Slonaker use assemblage constructions and mixed media painting to shift attention from literal houses to the experience of home and the spirit of place. The images in their show -- poignant, humorous and sometimes satirical -- ask viewers to examine and respond to aesthetic and emotional aspects of habitat, family, community, and homeland. Also on display at The Main Gallery during the month of July is Give Me Shelter, a collection of house-shaped sculptures created by 25 Bay Area artists. Sales of the sculptures will support programs for destitute people in Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries. The programs are Hope Enterprises, which provides vocational training for youth, and Ellilta, an organization that rescues girls from the commercial sex trade and helps them start small businesses. The backdrop for This Place Called Home and Give Me Shelter is the John Offerman house, a Victorian-era cottage and Redwood City landmark. The house turns 150 years old this year. The Woodhams’ family, who owns the home, gave permission to Marianne Lettieri to use in her assemblages for the show small pieces of the building stored in its basement, such as molding, decorative trim, and found artifacts. Recognizing today’s mobile society, The Forwarding Address by Ms. Lettieri is a house on wheels bearing the addresses of all the places she has lived in Florida, California and Europe. The art work is tethered to a six-foot tall column that serves as a kind of hitching post until the next move. She has incorporated salvaged architectural elements and parts of furniture in some of her pieces. For example, Dream of the Prodigal’s Son uses a screen door to frame a painting of clouds. For the work Bed and Board, she has superimposed onto a vintage headboard, a photo from the Portola Valley historical archives of a large group of children lined up in front of an unidentified building. As a tribute to the women of an earlier time who built this country with a make-do attitude and a good deal of moral fiber, Ms. Lettieri has reworked a Depression-era utility quilt, made out of denim overalls by her Carolina grandmother, into an American flag. Entitled Old Glory, the flag’s stripes are ladies’ gloves and its star field is made of pincushions collected over two years’ time from estate sales, antique stores, and friends’ sewing boxes. In the show, the art work by Ginger Slonaker speaks about what one gives up, gives into, and endures to own a house and create a home. Working with pastel and paint on gessoed canvas, paper, and board, she entices viewers into her images with their bright childish wonderment and whimsy, and then repels with unsettling associations. In An American Dream, “the grass is always greener”... house envy soon fades as the mortgage slaves surface before and after long days at work. The image in Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf is a woman shaped like a house with three little pigs in her belly. A woman and wolf balance on a tight rope. Ms. Slonaker makes a statement about the power of mothers to choose the right materials to build nurturing and protective homes for their children. A head connected to roots that are nourished with bacon, pancakes and syrup is the symbolism that Ms. Slonaker employs in Home Grown Root Ball. It illustrates the almost universal urge to establish praise, tradition, familiarity and comfort no matter how many times one is uprooted or transplanted. The artists participating in Give Me Shelter represent a range of visual media, including photography, painting, clay, fiber, and paper. Each artist was given a small house-shaped block of wood to embellish according to their signature style. The artists participating in Give Me Shelter include Lisa Atoji, David Baltzer, Elaina Bland, Dan Burke, Belinda Chlouber, Ellen Chong, Debora Crosby, Kate Curry, Carol Day, Nina Else, Kalani Engles, Deanna Iverson, Maria Klein, Diana Krupka, Marianne Lettieri, Lisette Lugo, Terri Moore, Barbara Mortkowitz, Saelon Renkes, Joyce Savre, Marianne Schulmberger, Deborah Sullivan, Karen Truesdell, Pam Wattenmaker, Susan Wolfe. |
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